He had to give up his hobbies of fencing, badminton and cooking for 142 days. The only thing Thomas Reiter, former astronaut and now a board member of the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), could do was play the guitar on board the International Space Station (ISS), where he spent six months.
On Monday, 7 July 2008 at 4.15 pm, Reiter will talk about his work on board the space station and scientific aspects of the mission as part of the Physics Colloquium at the University of Oldenburg. Reiter will also explain why space travel is anything but a pure luxury for scientists hungry for knowledge and the benefits of human space travel for our everyday lives. Apart from Russian cosmonauts, nobody has spent more time in space than Reiter. He was the eighth German in space and the first to undertake a "space walk".